This year, spring was full of surprises. Heavy rainfalls, even snow carpeting orange groves, it was like a never-ending spring, or even winter at times. But finally, the sun shines and the tourism season has started. Especially in the south, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, Antalya and its environs are famed as the epicenter of summer tourism, where masses come for the sea, sun and sand holiday. But is that all there is to it? Antalya’s lush green landscape, backed by the mighty mountains backing the city and all the historic sites stretching along the coast, offers many stories to be told. Antalya is also playing hard on gastronomy, rightly so, as its landscape generously offers all the bounty of nature can offer. The region is like the vegetable and fruit basket of the country, growing an incredible range of products, from exotic fruits to micro-greens and edible flowers. There is a story to be told about the richness of Antalya’s produce, all ready to set new tables with stories.
Positioning Antalya as culinary destination
This year, Antalya celebrated the fifth Antalya Food Festival, shortly known as FoodFest Antalya. Now in its fifth year, FoodFest Antalya continues to strengthen the city’s international standing by combining Antalya’s strong tourism infrastructure with its agricultural richness and contributing to the development of culinary tourism. The festival remains committed to its vision of positioning Antalya not only as a vacation destination but also as a culinary-focused destination for exploration.
Ms. Büşra Özdemir, Deputy Mayor of Antalya Metropolitan Municipality, highlighted the festival’s contribution to the city’s culinary tourism: “As Antalya Metropolitan Municipality, we are deeply proud and delighted to be organizing the fifth edition of our festival this year. During our festival, we are setting out with the motto ‘From Antalya to the World,’ as we do every year; this year, however, we have chosen the theme ‘Every Table Tells a Story.’ This theme approaches gastronomy not merely as a culinary experience, but as a multi-layered narrative shaped by geography, culture, production and human labor. From the products grown in Antalya’s fertile lands to the unique flavors of its seas; from the recipes passed down through generations by local masters to modern culinary interpretations, every plate carries a history and identity behind it. Every meal transforms into a unique story that encompasses a product’s journey from the soil, a producer’s labor, a chef’s interpretation and the memory of a landscape.
Every table tells different story
Gökmen Sözen, the Content Coordinator for FoodFest Antalya, comments on the festival’s theme and vision as a culinary platform: “We view FoodFest Antalya not merely as an event, but as a platform, a gathering place and a space where stories are shared. This growing initiative brings together stakeholders from diverse fields, contributing to the future of gastronomy. With its agricultural abundance, diverse climate and robust tourism infrastructure, Antalya is one of the cities where these stories are told most vividly. The vegetables and wild herbs we’ve focused on this year also represent the purest and most unadorned expression of this region. Because what we call gastronomy doesn’t begin in the kitchen — it begins in the soil itself.”
Indeed, Antalya has several stories to tell. Especially if you view the city in its unique setting. I happen to be one of the two curators of the gastronomy section of Antalya City Museum, unfortunately, a museum that never came into life. It was almost two decades ago, when we attempted to work on the museum with a whole section dedicated to gastronomy and culinary culture of Antalya. People were skeptical initially. Many thought there was not much about the food scene to mention and Antalya cuisine consisted of a few dishes only, şiş köfte (skewered meatballs) & tahinli piyaz (bean salad with tahini), hibaş, a tahini-based meze and perhaps the tahini-drizzled pumpkin dessert. That was all. But we viewed the city from a different perspective. We started telling our story from the mountains, from Antalya’s landscape and from its soil.
Mountains and sea
The story of Antalya starts from the mountains. The skirts of the mountains is home to one of the earliest human settlements in Anatolia, the caves of Karain and Öküzini, dating back to the first evolution of humans in Paleolithic times. Since then, Antalya and its environs have witnessed all civilizations, from the Phoenicians to the Greeks and Romans, from the Byzantines to the Seljuks and Ottomans. Needless to say, people have been eating, hunting, gathering, producing and trading food at all times. Practically speaking, the history of food in the eastern Mediterranean could easily be written with Antalya and its environs as the epicenter. When we commenced our study, it soon became clear that the story had to start with nature. Antalya is situated in such a breathtaking landscape, so rich in history, that it only does justice to tell its story starting from the mighty mountains, fertile land and the massive Mediterranean.
Then, of course, there is the endless Mediterranean. Eminent historian Fernand Braudel describes the Mediterranean city not merely as a fixed location, but as an essential, high-energy node within a broader, complex web of interaction. He views these cities, particularly port cities, as the “heart” of the Mediterranean world — areas of intense human activity where sea and land, trade and politics and multiple cultures converge. The Mediterranean city is the intersection of coastal and land power, serving as the heart bridging the sea and the mountains. Braudel identifies the Mediterranean city as a cosmos of “multiplicity of worlds,” that exists alongside the very different worlds of the mountains, the plains and the sea. That is exactly what Antalya is about. And the city has a multitude of stories to tell, especially culinary stories that reveal the richness of this region around the many tables to be set.
